Throw back to when homeless wore different clothes
20.01.2017
Remember the times when you could easily distinguish a homeless person by what he was wearing? I am having hard time remembering it too. Now all you have to do is to choose 4–5 items that don’t go together well, wear them and voila, you already look cool. No, I don’t think this new trend is that bad, I like some aspects of it too, but not all of them, definitely not.
Where have the Chanel flats and pencil skirts with well brushed hair or YSL elegance gone? I mean do we really have to wear clothes straight after getting up in the morning? or do we have to purposely create the. look like we did so?! basically, we have to make enormous effort to look effortless, right? confusing isn’t it?
We all know where it all started (at least so globally) don’t we?! we got crazy about revolutionary brand and started adjusting to it in any possible way.
I remember myself google-ing “Vetements” after Demna Gvasalia was appointed as the creative director of Balenciaga in 2015 and probably you do too. Obviously, I knew Gvasalia from Maison Martin Margiela, but his brand was something quite new to me that time.
I think Che Guevara, Mahatma Ghandi and other guys would be so jealous of Demna for his rebel soul, while Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla would die to have his innovative skills. He’s totally out of frames, he destroys stereotypes, he makes you pay 200 euros for the free DHL t-shirt, crave the brands that were forgotten and almost buried in 1990s. Gvasalia made 90s come back in 2017.
Gosha Rubchinskiy is the other phenomenon that is a reflection of 90s. I was talking to my sister about already not so new, but still prodigious and curious tendency, the other day, and we were discussing the similarities between the aesthetics of the new trends and our childhood, when she referred to him as the image of Post Soviet Era, and I remebered a movie I saw a long time ago named “Svolochi” about the colony of youth. Gosha’s models look exactly like the kids in the movie.
After running from one showroom to another with his own suitcase and handmade clothes on London fashion week in 2012 with no money, and after his return to hometown, the designer met Adrian Joffe, the president of Comme des Garcons and the man behind the Dover Street Market, who already has a revolutionary practice with Rei Kawakubo and who I think is the main power behind this new movement. Gosha started working for the concept store in 2014 and after a year his label has jumped 350 percent in sales. And bonus, there are more and more brands who also choose Gosha’s way of styling, I even caught the similar aesthetic in Numero 21 photo on instagram, come on Alessandro, I didn’t think you were that guy.
So, there is obviously, 350% something exciting about the brand, but while being so exotically interesting for the rest of the world, for us (kids from the 90s of post soviet countries) the aesthetics is kind of depressing.
Not only visual aesthetics, post Soviet 90s even has the sound for me that is not so pleasant as well. Despite being genius and almost musically perfect for some, I can’t even listen to Depeche Mode without remembering the crucial environment of the open-air markets of 90s Tbilisi.
And what I was saying was that the same goes with the brand. I am sure each of us had a Russian neighbour, alcoholic or a hooker, mastering the Rubchinskiy style that time.
If you would go in my backyard in 90s, you would think this is a performance by Rubchinskiy, you would find plenty of men wearing sweatpants and tops exatcly like Gosha’s, not to mention the styling, I swear you would die guessing who made an effort to put the sweatpants inside the socks in such a “cool” way.
No, I don’t have anything against wearing Gucci loafers or Chanel flats with an oversized hoodie, that’s exactly my kind of thing, somewhere between casual and fancy, it’s just I am wondering and trying to get answers; is it the start of the real fashion revolution we are experiencing here?! or is it just a tendency that will fade away after some time and we will all continue living our lives not being so desperate to look sooo damn (a’s) “cool”.
